Horace Cooper, co-chair of the Project 21 black leadership network and legal fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research, appeared today on “Wake Up!” with Steve Curtis on KLZ 560 AM to discuss the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ treatment of President Trump’s immigration executive order.

A few notable quotes from Horace:

On the Ninth Circuit: “There’s a reason that many times people refer to that particular circuit as the ‘Ninth Circus.’ It is unbelievable how many times the United States Supreme Court ends up having to overturn the Ninth Circuit. Their approach seems not to be so much grounded in what the LAW says about a particular issue, but in many instances, what is the most fair way for us to exercise equity power.”

On whether President Trump’s immigration executive order was a ‘Muslim ban’: “If you look at the specifics of the executive order, over 80% of all Muslim nations are completely unaffected as a result of this executive order. It’s a curious ‘Muslim ban’ in that it allows the overwhelming majority of Muslims to continue entering. The reality is that the nations that have been identified were nations that the outgoing Administration had indicated were problematic nations.”

On why President Trump may not want to appeal the 9th Circuit decision to SCOTUS: “The apprehension that I believe the Justice Department has is that we are not confident that if this got to the Supreme Court before July of this year, that the present makeup of the Court would be open to following just the law, and partisanship might break out.”

On how he would deal with the existing executive order: “I would rewrite the executive order so that it just omitted… several of the issues that the media has identified as most problematic. (And by the way, just because the media identifies something as problematic has nothing to do with whether or not it is legal.) And what that would do is it would allow this underlying first case to continue. If you expressly overrule the existing executive order, then that case is dismissed. I believe it would be of value to the American people, to the legal system generally, for us to get this decision overturned because it is THAT lawless.”